The third of the band’s classic singles can be stretched a bit to be used as a helpful metaphor to describe an emerging form pervasive “all around”-edness, this time in a more technological context. Upon reading a fascinating recent article on TechCrunch.com entitled The Next Stop on the Road to Revolution is Ambient Intelligence, by Gary Grossman, on May 7, 2016, you will find a compelling (but not too rocking) analysis about how the rapidly expanding universe of digital intelligent systems wired into our daily routines is becoming more ubiquitous, unavoidable and ambient each day.

All around indeed. Just as romance can dramatically affect our actions and perspectives, studies now likewise indicate that the relentless global spread of smarter – – and soon thereafter still smarter – – technologies is comparably affecting people’s lives at many different levels.²

I will summarize and annotate it, add some additional context, and then pose some of my own Trogg-inspired questions.

Internet of Experiences

Digital this, that and everything is everywhere in today’s world. There is a surging confluence of connected personal and business devices, the Internet, and the Internet of Things (I0T)³.Woven closely together on a global scale, we have essentially built “a digital intelligence network that transcends all that has gone before”. In some cases, this quantum of advanced technologies gains the “ability to sense, predict and respond to our needs”, and is becoming part of everyone’s “natural behaviors”.

A forth industrial revolution might even manifest itself in the form of machine intelligence whereby we will interact with the “always-on, interconnected world of things”. As a result, the Internet may become characterized more by experiences where users will converse with ambient intelligent systems everywhere. The supporting planks of this new paradigm include:

A prediction of what more fully realized ambient intelligence might look like using travel as an example appeared in an article entitled Gearing Up for Ambient Intelligence, by Lisa Morgan, on InformationWeek.com on March 14, 2016. Upon leaving his or her plane, the traveler will receive a welcoming message and a request to proceed to the curb to retrieve their luggage. Upon reaching curbside, a self-driving car6 will be waiting with information about the hotel booked for the stay.

Listening

Another article about ambient intelligence entitled Towards a World of Ambient Computing, by Simon Bisson, posted on ZDNet.com on February 14, 2014, is briefly quoted for the line “We will talk, and the world will answer”, to illustrate the point that current technology will be morphing into something in the future that would be nearly unrecognizable today. Grossman’s article proceeds to survey a series of commercial technologies recently brought to market as components of a fuller ambient intelligence that will “understand what we are asking” and provide responsive information.

Will it be long before we begin to see similar smart devices everywhere in homes and businesses?

Kevin Kelly, the founding Executive Editor of WIRED and a renowned futurist7, believes that in the near future, digital intelligence will become available in the form of a utility8 and, as he puts it “IQ as a service”. This is already being done by Google, Amazon, IBM and Microsoft who are providing open access to sections of their AI coding.9 He believes that success for the next round of startups will go to those who enhance and transforms something already in existence with the addition of AI. The best example of this is once again self-driving cars.

As well, in a chapter on Ambient Computing from a report by Deloitte UK entitled Tech Trends 2015, it was noted that some products were engineering ambient intelligence into their products as a means to remain competitive.

Recommending

A great deal of AI is founded upon the collection of big data from online searching, the use of apps and the IoT. This universe of information supports neural networks learn from repeated behaviors including people’s responses and interests. In turn, it provides a basis for “deep learning-derived personalized information and services” that can, in turn, derive “increasingly educated guesses with any given content”.

Bots are another contemporary manifestation of ambient intelligence. These are a form of software agent, driven by algorithms, that can independently perform a range of sophisticated tasks. Two examples include:

Optimally, bots should also be able to listen and “speak” back in return much like a 2-way phone conversation. This would also add much-needed context, more natural interactions and “help to refine understanding” to these human/machine exchanges. Such conversations would “become an intelligent and ambient part” of daily life.

An example of this development path is evident in Google Now. This service combines voice search with predictive analytics to present users with information prior to searching. It is an attempt to create an “omniscient assistant” that can reply to any request for information “including those you haven’t thought of yet”.

The configurations and specs of AI-powered devices, be it lapel pins, some form of augmented reality10 headsets or something else altogether, supporting such pervasive and ambient intelligence are not exactly clear yet. Their development and introduction will take time but remain inevitable.

Will ambient intelligence make our lives any better? It remains to be seen, but it is probably a viable means to handle some of more our ordinary daily tasks. It will likely “fade into the fabric of daily life” and be readily accessible everywhere.

Quite possibly then, the world will truly become a better place to live upon the arrival of ambient intelligence-enabled ocarina solos.

My Questions

Does the emergence of ambient intelligence, in fact, signal the arrival of a genuine fourth industrial revolution or is this all just a semantic tool to characterize a broader spectrum of smarter technologies?

How might this trend also effect non-commercial spheres such as public interest causes and political movements?

As ambient intelligence insinuates itself deeper into our online worlds, will this become a principal driver of new entrepreneurial opportunities for startups? Will ambient intelligence itself provide new tools for startups to launch and thrive?

Back in the halcyon days of yore before the advent of smartphones and WiFi, there were payphones and phone booths all over of the streets in New York. Most have disappeared, but a few scattered survivors have still managed to hang on. An article entitled And Then There Were Four: Phone Booths Saved on Upper West Side Sidewalks, by Corey Kilgannon, posted on NYTimes.com on February 10, 2016, recounts the stories of some of the last lonely public phones.

Taking their place comes a highly innovative new program called LinkNYC (also @LinkNYC and #LinkNYC). This initiative has just begun to roll out across all five boroughs with a network of what will become thousands of WiFi kiosks providing free and way fast free web access and phone calling, plus a host of other online NYC support services. The kiosks occupy the same physical spaces as the previous payphones.

The first batch of them has started to appear along Third Avenue in Manhattan. I took the photos accompanying this post of one kiosk at the corner of 14th Street and Third Avenue. While standing there, I was able to connect to the web on my phone and try out some of the LinkNYC functions. My reaction: This is very cool beans!

LinkNYC also presents some potentially great new opportunities for marketers. The launch of the program and the companies getting into it on the ground floor were covered in a terrific new article on AdWeek.com on February 15, 2015 entitled What It Means for Consumers and Brands That New York Is Becoming a ‘Smart City’, by Janet Stilson. I recommend reading it in its entirety. I will summarize and annotate it to add some additional context, and pose some of my own ad-free questions.

LinkNYC Set to Proliferate Across NYC

Link.NYC WiFi Kiosk 2, Image by Alan Rothman

When completed, LinkNYC will give New York a highly advanced mobile network spanning the entire city. Moreover, it will help to transform it into a very well-wired “smart city“.¹ That is, an urban area comprehensively collecting, analyzing and optimizing vast quantities of data generated by a wide array of sensors and other technologies. It is a network and a host of network effects where a city learns about itself and leverages this knowledge for multiple benefits for it citizenry.²

According to Mike Gamaroff, the head of innovation in the New York office of Kinetic Active a global media and marketing firm, LinkNYC is primarily a “utility” for New Yorkers as well as “an advertising network”. Its throughput rates are at gigabit speeds thereby making it the fastest web access available when compared to large commercial ISP’s average rates of merely 20 to 30 megabits.

Nick Cardillicchio, a strategic account manager at Civiq Smartscapes, the designer and manufacturer of the LinkNYC kiosks, said that LinkNYC is the only place where consumers can access the Net at such speeds. For the AdWeek.com article, he took the writer, Janet Stilson, on a tour of the kiosks include the one at Third Avenue and 14th Street, where one of the first ones is in place. (Coincidentally, this is the same kiosk I photographed for this post.)

There are a total of 16 currently operational for the initial testing. The WiFi web access is accessible with 150 feet of the kiosk and can range up to 400 feet. Perhaps those New Yorkers actually living within this range will soon no longer need their commercial ISPs.

Link.NYC WiFi Kiosk 4, Image by Alan Rothman

The initial advertisers appearing in rotation on the large digital screen include Poland Spring (see the photo at the right), MillerCoors, Pager and Citibank. Eventually “smaller tablet screens” will be added to enable users to make free domestic voice or video calls. As well, they will present maps, local activities and emergency information in and about NYC. Users will also be able to charge up their mobile devices.

However, it is still too soon to assess and quantify the actual impact on such providers. According to David Krupp, CEO, North America, for Kinetic, neither Poland Spring nor MillerCoors has produced an adequate amount of data to yet analyze their respective LinkNYC ad campaigns. (Kinetic is involved in supporting marketing activities.)

Commercializing the Kiosks

The organization managing LinkNYC, the CityBridge consortium (consisting of Qualcomm, Intersection, and Civiq Smartscapes) , is not yet indicating when the new network will progress into a more “commercial stage”. However, once the network is fully implemented with the next few years, the number of kiosks might end up being somewhere between 75,000 and 10,000. That would make it the largest such network in the world.

CityBridge is also in charge of all the network’s advertising sales. These revenues will be split with the city. Under the 12-year contract now in place, this arrangement is predicted to produce $500M for NYC, with positive cash flow anticipated within 5 years. Brad Gleeson, the chief commercial officer at Civiq, said this project depends upon the degree to which LinkNYC is “embraced by Madison Avenue” and the time need for the network to reach “critical mass”.

Because of the breadth and complexity of this project, achieving this inflection point will be quite challenging according to David Etherington, the chief strategy officer at Intersection. He expressed his firm’s “dreams and aspirations” for LinkNYC, including providing advertisers with “greater strategic and creative flexibility”, offering such capabilities as:

Dayparting – dividing a day’s advertising into several segments dependent on a range of factors about the intended audience, and

Hypertargeting – delivering advertising to very highly defined segments of an audience

Barry Frey, the president and CEO of the Digital Place-based Advertising Association, was also along for the tour of the new kiosks on Third Avenue. He was “impressed” by the capability it will offer advertisers to “co-locate their signs and fund services to the public” for such services as free WiFi and long-distance calling.

Poland Spring is now running a 5-week campaign featuring a digital ad (as seen in the third photo above). It relies upon “the brand’s popularity in New York”.

Capturing and Interpreting the Network’s Data

Link.NYC WiFi Kiosk 1, Image by Alan Rothman

Thus far, LinkNYC has been “a little vague” about its methods for capturing the network’s data, but has said that it will maintain the privacy of all consumers’ information. One source has indicated that LinkNYC will collect, among other points “age, gender and behavioral data”. As well, the kiosks can track mobile devices within its variably 150 to 400 WiFi foot radius to ascertain the length of time a user stops by. Third-party data is also being added to “round out the information”.³

Some industry experts’ expectations of the value and applications of this data include:

Helma Larkin, the CEO of Posterscope, a New York based firm specializing in “out-of- home communications (OOH)“, believes that LinkNYC is an entirely “new out-of-home medium”. This is because the data it will generate “will enhance the media itself”. The LinkNYC initiative presents an opportunity to build this network “from the ground up”. It will also create an opportunity to develop data about its own audience.

David Krupp of Kinetic thinks that data that will be generated will be quite meaningful insofar as producing a “more hypertargeted connection to consumers”.

Other US and International Smart City Initiatives

Currently in the US, there is nothing else yet approaching the scale of LinkNYC. Nonetheless, Kansas City is now developing a “smaller advertiser-supported network of kiosks” with wireless support from Sprint. Other cities are also working on smart city projects. Civiq is now in discussions with about 20 of them.

Internationally, Rio de Janeiro is working on a smart city program in conjunction with the 2016 Olympics. This project is being supported by Renato Lucio de Castro, a consultant on smart city projects. (Here is a brief video of him describing this undertaking.)

A key challenge facing all smart city projects is finding officials in local governments who likewise have the enthusiasm for efforts like LinkNYC. Michael Lake, the CEO of Leading Cities, a firm that help cities with smart city projects, believes that programs such as LinkNYC will “continue to catch on” because of the additional security benefits they provide and the revenues they can generate.

My Questions

Should domestic and international smart cities to cooperate to share their resources, know-how and experience for each other’s mutual benefit? Might this in some small way help to promote urban growth and development on a more cooperative global scale?

Should LinkNYC also consider offering civic support services such as voter registration or transportation scheduling apps as well as charitable functions where pedestrians can donate to local causes?

February 19, 2017 Update: For the latest status report on LinkNYC nearly a year after this post was first uploaded, please see After Controversy, LinkNYC Finds Its Niche, by Gerald Schifman, on CrainsNewYork.com, dated February 15, 2017.

1. While Googling “smart cities” might nearly cause the Earth to shift off its axis with its resulting 70 million hits, I suggest reading a very informative and timely feature from the December 11, 2015 edition of The Wall Street Journal entitled As World Crowds In, Cities Become Digital Laboratories, by Robert Lee Hotz.

2. Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers, and the Quest for a New Utopia (W. W. Norton & Company, 2013), by Anthony M. Townsend, is a deep and wide book-length exploration of how big data and analytics are being deployed in large urban areas by local governments and independent citizens. I very highly recommend reading this fascinating exploration of the nearly limitless possibilities for smart cities.

These items just in from the Pop Culture Department: It would seem nearly impossible to film an entire movie thriller about a series of events centered around a public phone, but a movie called – – not so surprisingly – – Phone Booth managed to do this quite effectively in 2002. It stared Colin Farrell, Kiefer Sutherland and Forest Whitaker. Imho, it is still worth seeing.

Furthermore, speaking of Kiefer Sutherland, Fox announced on January 15, 2016 that it will be making 24: Legacy, a complete reboot of the 24 franchise, this time without him playing Jack Bauer. Rather, they have cast Corey Hawkins in the lead role. Hawkins can now be seen doing an excellent job playing Heath on season 6 of The Walking Dead. Watch out Grimes Gang, here comes Negan!!

Metamaterials are not something used by the United Federation of Planets’ engineers to build the next iteration of the Starship Enterprise (which, btw, would be designated the NCC-1701-F, although some may differ). Rather, they are materials fabricated in such a manner that they can bend light, sound, radar, radio and seismic waves. The technological implication of applying these materials in antennas, radar, cosmetics and soundproofing may prove to be transformative according to a fascinating article in the March 23, 2015 edition of The New York Times entitled The Waves of the Future May Bend Around Metamaterials, by John Markoff. I will summarize this, add some links and annotations, and pose some questions.

These substances achieve their remarkable effect by being composed of microscopic “subcomponents” that are smaller than the wavelengths of the types of waves they are engineered to bend in certain ways. That is, they can be used to “manipulate” the waves in designated manners “that do not normally occur”.

Researchers have been developing a variety of metamaterials for the past 15 years. Their work has recently begun yielding some genuine innovations in systems that incorporate these advances in original and innovative ways. Some of these latest developments include:

Kymeta has partnered with Intelsat to engineer “land-based and satellite-based intelligent antennas”.

Dr. Xiang Zhang at the University of California at Berkeley, is working on, among other metamaterials projects, “superlenses” for microscopes that might increase their magnification powers beyond today’s capabilities. He has received inquiries from “military contractors and commercial companies” and even cosmetics companies concerning metamaterials. As well, he and other developers are creating apps for optical computer networks.

Professor Vinod Menon and his research team at the City College of New York, in their Laboratory for Nano and Micro Photonics, have demo-ed “light emission from ultrafast-switching LEDs” made from metamaterials. Using this and other related developments may also lead to significantly faster optical computers networks.

Menard Construction published a paper in 2013 entitled Seismic Metamaterial: How to Shake Friends and Influence Waves? by S. Brûlé, E.H. Javelaud, S. Enoch and S. Guenneau, where the company successfully tested “a metamaterial grid of empty cylindrical columns bored into soil” in an effort to reduce the effects of a “simulated earthquake”. (The phases in quotes in the last sentence were from the NYTimes article, not the research paper itself.)

The article concludes on a note of great optimism from Professor Zhang about the future of metamaterials. I completely agree. Once these apps and development projects make their way into commercial markets and other scientists and companies from different fields and industries take greater notice, I strongly believe that new forms of metamaterials and their applications will emerge that have not even been imagined yet. Like any dramatically new technology, this will find its applications perhaps in some very unlikely and surprising sectors.

Just to start off, what about medical devices, optical computing and storage devices, visual displays, sound and video recording, and automotive safety technology? Let’s keep watching and see what springs from people’s needs and creativity.

[This post was originally uploaded on January 16, 2015. It has been updated below with new information on March 22, 2015.]

It almost seems simple at first: What works and what doesn’t when companies implement their digital strategies in today’s highly competitive world of retailing? Answers such as “great social apps” or “full mobile implementation” are belied by their complexities in carefully making the right choices in the right markets, for the right products and service offerings, for right consumer demographic groups. As the global digital economy spins faster every day, businesses need keep pace and be able to rapidly adapt to a multitude of volatile market variables and evolving technologies.

In a deeply insightful and informative article posted on January 14, 2015, on the Harvard Business Review website entitled Why Nordstrom’s Digital Strategy Works (and Yours Probably Doesn’t) by Jeanne W. Ross, Cynthia M. Beath and Ina Sebastian, the retailer Nordstrom is presented as a paradigm for what does work and how the company made it so. I highly recommend reading it in its entirely. I will sum up, cross-reference some related Subway Fold posts, and add some questions to it.

The authors begin by citing a recent poll conducted by MIT Sloan School of Management, Center for Information Systems Research that found 42% of those responding anticipated a competitive edge from engaging the tech elements of social¹, mobile², analytics³, cloud and Internet of Things (SMACIT). Because each of these elements’ has a common denominator – – being their accessibility to “customers, employees, partners and competitors” – – they do not, per se, provide any commercial advantage. Rather, it is companies like Nordstrom that persistently focus on unifying all of these factors into a well-defined strategic purpose who will prosper.

For almost a century, Nordstrom has maintained their focus on producing an optimal experience for both customers and employees. Starting in the late 1990’s, they began searching for new technologies to “empower” their employees’ operations including the company’s website and inventory control that presented “a consistent multi-channel experience by 2002”. Thereafter, through 2014, they have continued to add more key innovations including:

Point-of-sale system that permits sales staff members to gather data on customers’ online requests

An internal lab for innovation

Apps for shopping (tightly linked to inventory control)

Mobile checkout that, among its other features, enables an employee to accompanying a customer through the payment process

Texting support for sales reps

A personalized men’s clothing service residing in the cloud

These systems are highly integrated with each other, firmly establishing and embedding a digital business model throughout the organization. Among its other achievements, inventory control and delivery have been optimized and, in turn, make the experience of ordering and delivering merchandise a seamless and convenient operation. Elsewhere on the web, Nordstrom’s presence on the social site Pinterest provides its employees with an enhanced understanding of customers’ interests and preferences. Most telling of all is the fact that Nordstrom’s revenues have increased by more than 50% during the last five years.

The authors again emphasize that the company’s financial and strategic successes with their digital operations, in this digital economy, is due far more to their tight woven SMACIT program, rather than just having a collection of superior but otherwise isolated elements of it. Thus, absent all of SMACIT’s pieces working in harmony with comprehensive corporate support, other retailers will not attain similar business benefits. The sum of the whole program is much greater than its individual parts.

My follow-up questions include:

How can other companies, including competitors in the retail industry as well as others in unrelated markets, benefit from Nordstrom’s digital business model? For instance, would this also produce demonstrable benefits for an auto manufacturer? What internal and customer-facing metrics and controls would indicate progress for such efforts?

Is Nordstrom’s strategy likewise adaptable and applicable to more service-oriented industries such as law, medicine or accounting? If so, what adjustments to the planning process would be needed?

What new forms of jobs might emerge for dedicated executives, project managers and other enablers to make SMACIT-based plans work? Might this also create new entrepreneurial opportunities to provide additional policy, planning and logistical support?

The initial post above identified five key elements of successful contemporary digital strategies as including social, mobile, analytics, cloud and the Internet of Things, forming the anagram SMACIT. On March 18, 2015, a fascinating and highly useful posting recently appeared on AdAge.com entitled More Data Brings More Risk: CMOs Must Embrace ‘Risk Marketing’ by Curtis Hougland on March 18, 2015. I believe that its exploration and 5-point plan for implementing risk management is so important that it should be integrated into SMACIT. I further suggest adding the letter “R” and then rearranging the anagram to be CAR MITS because it’s easier to remember and “car” (as in driving a strategy) and “mits” (for wearing protective gear when handing something important).

Mr. Hougland as produced an expertly written and highly persuasive case for how “risk marketing” in inevitably part of every chief marketing officer’s (CMO) key concerns. Moreover, he presents concise and pragmatic plan for them to evaluate and integrate into their strategic planning. These include the following, which are detailed in his piece:

Embedding risk assessment as a core marketing practice

Embracing compliance

Borrowing the risk management playbook in marketing

De-siloing [read: opening] problem solving

Approaching data as a creative exercise

Never missing an opportunity to try an anagram, I have come up the following for this: Compliance, Open problem solving, Playbook, Embedding risk assessment, and Data. Thus, when a CMO is asked whether he or she has deploying this strategic plan they can confidently reply “Yes, I have COPED with it”.

I strongly suggest not limiting just this to the consideration of CMOs. Rather, I believe that anyone working in marketing, business development, operations, IT, legal and knowledge management can benefit and help to implement these components.

If the initial January 17, 2015 post above was of interest to you, then I urge you to click-through and read this new piece in its entirety. I believe you will find a strong synergy between both of the marketing strategies being advocated by their respective authors.

Marc Andreessen, the founder of Netscape who then went on to become a founding partner in the leading venture capital firm Andreesseen Horowitz, wrote a very thought-provoking and often cited piece in the August 20, 2012 edition of The Wall Street Journal entitled Why Software Is Eating The World. (Subscription required.) To vastly oversimplify his thesis, an ever increasing number of businesses are run almost entirely on software and delivered online. He predicted the velocity of this change would continue to increase for the next ten years.

Yesterday, October 28, 2014, as an update to that, Benedict Evens of Andreessen Horowitz presented a 45-slide presentation at the 2-day WSJD Live Global Technology Conference entitled Mobile is Eating the World. This was also the subject of some very concise coverage on The Wall Street Journal’s Digits Blog in a story entitled Never Mind Software – Mobile is Eating the World by Evelyn M. Rusli. To briefly recap it, mobile technology is having a major and growing impact on nearly everything we do each day and on a broad spectrum of traditional industries. Among many other key points in this presentation:

WhatsApp, recently purchased by Facebook, is dominant in mobile messaging and demonstrates how a small develop team such as this was able to have such a tremendous impact on this market.*

A widening gap between the increasing aggregate time spent on mobile devices versus the decreasing aggregate time on desktop systems.

Mobile platforms are were users are spending more and more of their “waking hours”.

Over time, phone calls and emails will decline while messaging and social media will increase on mobile devices.

Very significant business and technical opportunities await in the mobile world.

I highly recommend clicking through to all of the above links for this slide deck, conference and report. The slide deck itself is also particularly enlightening about, among other things, growth prospects, market forces, market segments, costs, key companies in different mobile sub-sectors, and mobile supply chain dynamics. There is much to consider here for anyone having anything to do with mobile, which is, by definition, all of us.

For further reference, I also suggest a look back at this July 31, 2014 post on The Subway Fold entitled Mary Meeker’s 2014 Internet Trends Presentation which also covered the exponential growth of mobile technologies and put that in context and perspective with many other of the very latest trends in online technology, economics and culture.

____________________________* See also Facebook’s $21.8 Billion WhatsApp Acquisition Lost $138 Million Last Year by David Gelles in yesterday’s (October 28, 2014) edition of The New York Times, that despite this loss, Facebook has an extensive long-term technological and financial plans for WhatsApp. I also recommend a click-through and full read of this for its full coverage and enlightening details of FB’s corporate strategy for this multi-billion dollar messaging platform.